Book Review: "This Will Be My Undoing" by Morgan Jerkins
“This Will Be My Undoing” by Morgan Jerkins
Bookshop | Amazon
Publisher Synopsis: Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn't afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to "be"--to live as, to exist as--a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it's necessary reading for all Americans.
Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country's larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.
Whether she's writing about Sailor Moon; Rachel Dolezal; the stigma of therapy; her complex relationship with her own physical body; the pain of dating when men say they don't "see color"; being a black visitor in Russia; the specter of "the fast-tailed girl" and the paradox of black female sexuality; or disabled black women in the context of the "Black Girl Magic" movement, Jerkins is compelling and revelatory.
Rating: 5
Review: One of the most important things I think a person who considers themselves a feminist can do is read books and memoirs by Black women. Feminism in America has a long history of ignoring Black voices, and now more than ever, intersectionality is crucial.
So, may I suggest starting with this excellent book of essays by Morgan Jerkins? The full title is “This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America,” and as expected, much of the books deals with growing up as a Black woman in predominantly white spaces (cheerleading tryouts, Princeton), and subsequently moving to Harlem and realizing how different it is to be among Black people in Black spaces.
Jerkins writes about initially judging the people in Harlem and on the train, and then understanding that she was judging them in the context of acceptable behavior as dictated by white people. “Harlem is not a white space, and so black people do not need to behave in a way white people find respectable,” Jerkins writes. Whiteness is so normalized and centered in our culture that even those who are not white can have trouble de-centering it as the expected norm.
There is a beautiful chapter dedicated to Jerkins’ fellow Princeton alum Michelle Obama, in which she writes of white people hating Michelle Obama and creating racist caricatures of her because they most of us will never achieve what she’s achieved. “The White House was never meant to be your home” struck me as particularly poignant and heartbreaking because, it’s true. Slaves built that building and Michelle Obama is the embodiment of their wildest dream.
Jerkins writes of Rachel Dolezal and the long history of white women appropriating Black culture and look, which of course is not acceptable to reciprocate because in a white supremacist society, white women can look like whoever we want, but Black women must meet white beauty standards but they can never be white.
She writes of being verbally harassed by a Black man in Harlem and the inability to report it. “I would subject myself to a black man’s harassment a thousand times over rather than watch his face hit the pavement with a police officer’s weight on his back. That’s not justice. That’s betrayal.”
She writes of how Black girls are never just cute, innocent little girls. They are continually warned to not be “fast-tailed,” to not get a reputation, to be presentable according to whiteness, to be better than others to meet the standards set by white people.
This country has failed Black women over and over again. Ninety-four percent of Black women voters in 2016 voted for Hillary Clinton, while 54% of white women voted for sexual assaulter and racist Donald Trump. Until white women choose their sex over their race and stand up for our Black sisters, who continually stand up for us and for Black men and everyone else, and receive nothing in return, they will continue to be subjugated and have their humanity stripped away, and we cannot stand for that.
TL;DR: A necessary book for anyone who claims to be feminist. Jerkins’ voice is a must-read as she explores living at the intersectionality of being Black and a woman, and how being doubly subjugated renders one “both invisible and hypervisible, stripped of humanity.”
If you liked this, try:
“Thick: And Other Essays” by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Bookshop | Amazon)
“Know My Name” by Chanel Miller (Bookshop | Amazon) (my review | Elizabeth’s review)
“Love, Loss, and What We Ate” by Padma Lakshmi (Bookshop | Amazon)
“You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain” by Phoebe Robinson (Bookshop | Amazon)
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